Lesson 7
Aftermath
Introduction
CONTENTS
Lesson Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Quotation Bearing Witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Document 1A Population Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Document 1B Map: Survivors of the Holocaust, 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Document 2A Reading: Night by Elie Wiesel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Document 2B Reading: “My War Began in 1945” by Deborah Dwork . . 282
Document 3A Chronology of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Document 3B Reading: “What Will Become of Us?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Document 3C Photo: Exodus Protest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Document 4A Reading: War Crimes Trials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Document 4B Reading: The Nazi Hunter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Document 4C Reading: The Most-Wanted Nazi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Document 5 Poem: “The Hangman” by Maurice Ogden . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Document 6 Reading: Universal Declaration of Human Rights . . . . . . . . 294
Document 7 Cartoon: “Ethnic Cleansing Center” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Document 8 Poem: “Riddle” by William Heyen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Document 9 The Universe of Obligation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
The HHREC gratefully acknowledges
the funders who supported our
curriculum project:
• Office of State Senator
Vincent Leibell/New York State
Department of Education
• Fuji Photo Film USA
274
Aftermath
KEY VOCABULARY
Adolf Eichmann
displaced person (DP)
DP camp
LESSON OVERVIEW
In this lesson students will examine the difficulties faced by the
survivors of the Holocaust. They will also examine the way in
which the perpetrators were handled after the war.
Exodus
International Military Tribunal
partition
Simon Wiesenthal
survivor
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights
INSTRUCTIONAL PLAN AND ACTIVITIES
Activity 1
• Distribute Documents 1A to 3C to students. Discuss the difficulties the survivors faced psychologically, politically, economically,
and socially.
war crimes trials
OBJECTIVES
• Students will raise and consider key
questions regarding the Holocaust.
• Students will realize that man’s
inhumanity to man can surface in a
variety of historical circumstances.
• Students will understand the dangers
of blind obedience to authority.
• Students will carry the message so
that it cannot happen again.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
How were those involved in the
Holocaust affected in the years following the war?
Aftermath
Activity 2
• Ask students to read Documents 4A to 4C. Discuss whether
high-ranking Nazi officials should continue to be pursued and
prosecuted. Has justice been served by the punishment of these
officials?
Activity 3
• What do documents 5 to 7 suggest that we have learned in the
years since the Holocaust?
Activity 4
• Distribute the graphic organizer “Your Universe of Obligation.”
Document 9. Remind the students that they completed this
activity at the beginning of the unit. Ask students why they think
it is being repeated here. Ask students to complete the organizer.
Ask students how this differs from the one they completed at the
beginning of the unit.
275
RESOURCES
1A Population Table
1B Map: Survivors of the Holocaust,
1945
2A Reading: Night by Elie Wiesel
2B Reading: “My War Began in 1945”
by Deborah Dwork
Concluding Question
Why, after all this, have the words “never again” gone unheeded?
Contemporary Connection and Homework
Read “Something in Common: Horror.” Answer the questions
in writing.
3A Chronology of Events
3B Reading: “What Will Become
of Us?”
3C Photo: Exodus Protest
4A Reading: War Crimes Trials
4B Reading: The Nazi Hunter
4C Reading: The Most-Wanted Nazi
5 Poem: “The Hangman” by
Maurice Ogden
6 Reading: Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
7 Cartoon: “Ethnic Cleansing
Center”
8 Poem: “Riddle” by William Heyen
9 The Universe of Obligation
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QUOTATIONS
by Elie Wiesel
“For the dead and the living we must bear witness. For not only are we
responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what
we do with those memories.”
Elie Wiesel
Wiesel, Elie. Night. (New York, Bantam, 1982).
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with
courage, need not be lived again.”
Maya Angelou
http://www.quotationspace.com/quote/31974.html
Aftermath
277
DOCUMENT 1A
Population Table
This table shows the number of Jews that were killed by Hitler’s government. Use the information to
answer the questions that follow.
From The War Against the Jews by Lucy S. Dawdowicz, 1962. Reprinted by permission.
QUESTIONS
1. Examine the population table and comment on the following
a. The number and percentage of Jews killed in Poland vs. Germany.
b. The number and percentage of Jews killed in France, Bulgaria, Italy, and Luxembourg.
2. Now use the table again to answer these questions.
a. Why were a high percentage of Jews killed in some countries while a low percentage were killed
in other countries?
b. Why must tables be examined and used very carefully?
278
Aftermath
DOCUMENT 1B
Map: Survivors of the Holocaust, 1945
Martin Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust (New York: William Morrow, 1983), 242.
QUESTIONS
Consider the information on Document 1A, which shows the number and percentage of Jews killed.
Why must one be careful about drawing conclusions about Document 1B.
Aftermath
279
DOCUMENT 2A
Night by Elie Wiesel
Liberation
I had to stay at Buchenwald until April eleventh.
I have nothing to say of my life during this period. It no longer mattered. After my father’s
death, nothing could touch me any more.
I was transferred to the children’s block,
where there was six hundred of us.
The front was drawing nearer.
I spent my days in a state of total idleness.
And I had but one desire—to eat. I no longer
thought of my father or of my mother.
From time to time I would dream of a drop
of soup, of an extra ration of soup…
On April fifth, the wheel of history turned.
It was late in the afternoon. We were standing in the block, waiting for an SS man to come
and count us. He was late in coming. Such a
delay was unknown till then in the history of
Buchenwald. Something must have happened.
Two hours later the loudspeakers sent out an
order from the head of the camp: all the Jews
must come to the assembly place.
This was the end! Hitler was going to keep
his promise.
The children in our block went toward the
place. There was nothing else we could do.
Gustav, the head of the block, made this clear to
us with his truncheon. But on the way we met
some prisoners who whispered to us:
“Go back to your block, and don’t move.”
We went back to our block. We learned on
the way that the camp resistance organization
had decided not to abandon the Jews and was
going to prevent their being liquidated.
As it was late and there was great upheaval—
innumerable Jews had passed themselves off as
280
non-Jews—the head of the camp decided that a
general roll call would take place the following
day. Everybody would have to be present.
The roll call took place. The head of the
camp announced that Buchenwald was to be liquidated. Ten blocks of deportees would be evacuated each day. From this moment, there would
be no further distribution of bread and soup.
And the evacuation began. Every day, several
thousand prisoners went through the camp gate
and never came back.
On April tenth, there were still about twenty
thousand of us in the camp, including several
hundred children. They decided to evacuate us
all at once, right on until the evening. Afterward,
they were going to blow up the camp.
So we were massed in the huge assembly
square, in rows of five, waiting to see the gate
open. Suddenly, the sirens began to wail. An
alert! We went back to the blocks. It was too late
to evacuate us that evening. The evacuation was
postponed again to the following day.
We were tormented with hunger. We had
eaten nothing for six days, except a bit of grass
or some potato peelings found near the kitchens.
At ten o’clock in the morning the SS scattered through the camp, moving the last victims
toward the assembly place.
Then the resistance movement decided to
act. Armed men suddenly rose up everywhere.
Bursts of firing. Grenades exploding. We children stayed flat on the ground in the block.
The battle did not last long. Toward noon
everything was quiet again. The SS had fled and
the resistance had taken charge of the running of
the camp.
Aftermath
DOCUMENT 2A (Continued)
Night by Elie Wiesel
At about six o’clock in the evening, the first
American tank stood at the gates of Buchenwald.
Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of
that. Not of revenge, not of our families.
Nothing but bread.
And even when we were no longer hungry,
there was still no one who thought of revenge.
On the following day, some of the young men
went to Weiman to get some potatoes and
clothes—and to sleep with girls. But of revenge,
not a sign.
Three days after the liberation of
Buchenwald I became very ill with food poisoning. I was transferred to the hospital and spent
two weeks between life and death.
One day I was able to get up, after gathering
all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the
mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not
seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse
gazed back at me.
The look in his eyes, as they stared into
mine, has never left me.
Elie Wiesel, Night. New York: Bantam, 1982. 117-119
QUESTIONS
1. What events are described in this passage?
2. What was Elie Wiesel thinking at this time?
3. Interpret what Wiesel sees in the mirror.
Aftermath
281
DOCUMENT 2B
“My War Began in 1945” by Deborah Dwork
During the war, I, Maurits Cohen was a child and I was engaged with everyday living. The
very impact of the consequences of the war I experienced after the war ended. My war
began in 1945, and not in 1940. When I learned that my father and mother would not come
back, and my brothers, then the war started. It took me years to get used to the idea, to find
my own place, an only child, of course. We had had a very big family, so as a child I had to
carry the whole weight of survival.
Deborah Dwork, “My War Began in 1945,” in Images of the Holocaust: A Literature Anthology, ed. Jean E. Brown, Elaine C. Stephens and Janet E. Rubin
(Lincolnwood, IL: NTC, 1997), 425.
QUESTIONS
1. As a Jewish child, how could he have been “engaged with everyday living” during the war?
2. Why did he say that his war began in 1945?
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Aftermath
DOCUMENT 3A
Chronology of Events
1944
July 23
Majdanek near Lublin, Poland, becomes the first Nazi death camp to be liberated.
1945
January–May Most Nazi death and concentration camps are liberated.
May 7
Unconditional surrender of Germany ends World War II in Europe.
August
U.S. General Patton grudgingly accompanies General Eisenhower on a tour
of the Feldafing Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. In an August 31 letter
to his wife, Patton comments that “Actually the Germans are the only decent
people left in Europe.”
October
David Ben-Gurion visits the displaced persons camps in Europe and tells
survivors that all who want to go to Palestine will be taken there as soon
as possible.
December 22 President Truman’s order grants special permission to displaced persons who
want to enter the United States; some 22,950 arrive.
1946
March 19
July 4
July 22
Chaim Hirschmann, one of two survivors of the Belzec death camps, is killed
upon his return to Lublin, Poland.
Pogrom in Kielce, Poland, against 150 returning Jewish survivors leaves fortytwo dead and fifty wounded.
Agents of the radical Jewish group Irgun blow up the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem, killing ninety-one British, Arabs, and Jews.
1947
One million displaced persons remain in the camps of Europe.
July 18
Jewish refugee ship Exodus is rammed by British destroyers off the coast of
Haifa, Palestine. Passengers and crew are arrested and returned to Europe.
November 29 United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution for partitioning
Palestine into two states, an Arab and a Jewish. The partition becomes effective
in May 1948, when the British mandate in Palestine expires.
Aftermath
283
DOCUMENT 3A (Continued)
Chronology of Events
1948
April 9
May 14
Jewish extremist groups massacre the residents in the Arab village of Deir Yassin.
British mandate to rule Palestine expires. David Ben-Gurion declares birth of
the Jewish State of Israel. Fighting between the Arabs and Jews—the Israeli
War of Independence—begins.
May 28
Arabs take over the Old City of Jerusalem in the Israeli War of Independence.
June 11
First UN-supervised truce in the War of Independence begins. It is broken on
July 9 in a fight for the Negev. Second truce takes effect July 18.
June 25
U.S. immigration law allows 200,000 immigrants to enter the United States
over the next two years, but with stiff restrictions. Ultimately the law is modified to be less discriminatory against Jews.
June 26
Allied pilots begin largest airlift in world history, flying tons of food, fuel, and
supplies into communist-controlled Berlin to relieve the Soviet blockade
around the city.
September 17 Count Folke Bernadotte, UN mediator in the Arab-Israeli war, and his assistant, are assassinated by a Jewish terrorist group.
October 14 Third round of the Israeli War of Independence begins with Egyptians fighting
the Israelis in the Negev.
1949
January 12
February
August 14
Peace talks begin between Arabs and Israelis and individual Arab countries.
David Ben-Gurion elected the first prime minister of Israel.
Body of Theodor Herzl, father of Zionism, arrives in Israel and is buried on a
hill above Jerusalem.
1950
Law of Return is passed by the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, granting every
Jew worldwide the right to settle permanently in Israel.
December 17 Central Committee of the Jewish Displaced Persons is disbanded. All refugees
who wanted to immigrate to Israel have arrived.
1950
Law passed by the Knesset grants citizenship to all Jewish immigrants.
QUESTION
What difficulties did surviving Jews face after World War II?
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Aftermath
DOCUMENT 3B
“What Will Become of Us?”
Hitler’s goal in the Final Solution was to see that
not a single Jew survived. He came frighteningly
close to realizing his goal. Approximately 6 million of the 11 million Jews living in Europe
before World War II were dead by the war’s end.
The Jews who somehow managed to survive
the war, whether in concentration camps, in hiding, or in exile in the Soviet Union and other
countries, now faced a new nightmare. They had
to deal with the loss of their friends, families,
homes—sometimes entire communities. They
were alive—but most were alone, with no place
to go. Many were plagued by guilt, feeling that
they did not deserve to live when so many others
had been killed.
Among those murdered in the Holocaust
were 11⁄ 2 million children. There were also many
war orphans—thousands of children who survived, but without their parents. In many parts
of war-torn Europe, orphanages were set up to
care for these youngsters.
“Beaten Both Spiritually and Physically”
To help survivors, the Allies set up Displaced
Persons (DP) camps, where people could get
food, medical care, a place to sleep, and—ideally—news of loved ones. But, often, conditions
were nearly as bad in the DP camps as they had
been in the concentration camps.
Wrote the director of one such DP camp in
Germany:
The camp is filthy beyond description.
Sanitation is…unknown… With few exceptions the people…appear demoralized beyond
hope of rehabilitation. They appear to be
beaten both spiritually and physically.
Aftermath
Unlike the other Allies, the Soviets, who had
driven dozen of Nazis out of Poland, did not
establish Displaced Persons camps. Instead, they
maintained that there was no refugee problem.
As a result, nearly 1 million people liberated
from the Nazi camps in Poland were left completely on their own to find food and shelter.
Weak, downtrodden, and confused, many simply
wandered before finally succumbing to death.
Europe in Tatters
Nearly all of Europe had been devastated by the
six long years of war. Millions of Europeans desperately needed food and fuel. Medical supplies,
too, were scarce. Disease was rampant across the
continent.
There were nearly 10 million Displaced
Persons when the war ended. No one in the
Allied command had ever anticipated there
would be so many DPs in need of help. The
Allies faced the formidable problem of not only
feeding and clothing these people but also providing shelter for them.
Because of the enormity of the DP problem,
Holocaust survivors were not immediately
offered special care. In the meantime, malnutrition and infectious diseases continued to take a
deadly toll on camp survivors. Conditions for
the prisoners at many camps had deteriorated
dramatically near the end of the war. Of the prisoners liberated at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945,
tens of thousands had died by June.
In addition to the acute physical needs of
survivors, there were also serious psychological
needs that required attention. After liberation,
some survivors were confined within the same
fences that had previously been patrolled by
285
DOCUMENT 3B (Continued)
“What Will Become of Us?”
Nazis. With clothes in short supply, many still
wore their concentration camp-issue striped
uniforms; others could find no clothing other
than German SS uniforms—the very items that
had once clothed their oppressors. In many
cases, Jewish survivors were confined in the
same quarters with former camp guards and
Nazi collaborators.
“The Civilized World Owes It…”
In 1945, the U.S. State Department, under pressure from the American public, sent Earl
Harrison, a former U.S. immigration commissioner, to Europe. It was his responsibility to
report firsthand on the conditions in the refugee
camps in the American sector of occupied
Germany.
Harrison confirmed what had already been
told in various newspaper accounts. He wrote in
his report to the U.S. President Harry Truman:
“…they are in need of attention and help. Up to
this point, they have been ‘liberated’ more in a
military sense than actually.”
Harrison delivered harsh criticism, writing,
“As matters now stand, we appear to be treating
the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that
we do not exterminate them.” He then summarized various avenues that he felt would improve
the situation:
In conclusion, I wish to repeat that the main
solution, in many ways the only real solution,
of the problem lies in the quick evacuation of
all nonrepatriable [stateless] Jews in
Germany and Austria, who wish it, to
Palestine. In order to be effective, this plan
must not be long delayed. The civilized world
owes it to this handful of survivors.
286
Upon receiving the report, Truman immediately issued a series of orders to address the situation. In Europe, General Eisenhower himself
oversaw their implementation. To begin, U.S.
military officials relieved Germans of their positions administering certain camps. They also
relieved the overcrowding, improved unsanitary
conditions, and increased daily food rations. A
tracing bureau was created to assist survivors in
locating family members who might have survived, but this was largely ineffective.
By the fall of 1945, thanks largely to
Harrison’s report and Truman’s response, life for
Jewish survivors in the DP camps had improved
somewhat. Plans were also under way to establish camps specifically for Jewish survivors. But
still no progress had been made in finding the
Jews a permanent home.
By September 1945, the Allies had returned
approximately 7 million DPs to their homelands.
Just under 2 million remained in Germany.
Hatred at Home
Anti-Semitism had not ended in Europe simply
because the armies of Nazi Germany had been
defeated. Numerous pogroms—organized mob
violence—against Jews still took place across
Poland between September and December 1945.
In the Polish town of Piekuszow, a mob
pulled a 70-year-old Jewish woman from a train
and stoned her to death. Six other Jews also lost
their lives there. Several hundred Polish Jews
who had managed to live through years of the
Holocaust were murdered in similar incidents
immediately following the war. But Jews continued to return to their homes in Poland. Where
else could they go?
Aftermath
DOCUMENT 3B (Continued)
“What Will Become of Us?”
An estimated 175,000 Jews—a small fraction
of the more than 3.5 million Jews who had lived
in Poland before the war—had taken refuge in
the Soviet Union during the war. Early in 1946,
they returned home. In the Polish town of
Kielce, 150 Jews returned with the hope of reestablishing their community. Within months,
however, it became clear that coming home
would not be easy. In July, a mob of townspeople
attacked the returned Jews, killing 41, and
wounding 50 more.
When word of this attack spread, Jews once
again began fleeing Poland. More than 100,000
sought refuge in the British and American sectors of occupied Germany. By 1947, the number
of Jews in DP camps was well over 200,000.
To Where?
In his report to the State Department, Harrison
had urged the United States to help get the Jews
out of Germany. But neither the British nor the
Americans were willing to raise their immigration quotas to allow more Jewish refugees into
their countries.
President Truman urged the British government to allow Jewish DPs into Palestine, a land
in the Middle East under British control. But the
situation there was complex. The British, fearful
of repercussions from Palestinian Arabs, were
restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine.
As late as 1947, two years after the end of the
war, the Jewish refugee problem remained
unsolved.
More than 200,000 European Jews were still
in need of a home—or a homeland. At that
point Jewish refugees comprised nearly onequarter of the remaining DP population. Many
dreamed of going to Palestine. Others desperately wanted to begin a new life in the United
States. Most would have been happy just to leave
Europe forever. The situation remained unresolved into 1948.
Eleanor Ayer and Stephen Chicione, Holocaust: From the Ashes: 1945 and After (Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press, 1998), 19–24.
QUESTIONS
1. What difficulties did the Jews who survived the Holocaust face?
2. How did the nations of the world respond to the plight of Holocaust survivors?
3. How did the Holocaust contribute to the desire to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine?
Aftermath
287
DOCUMENT 3C
Photo: Exodus Protest
In June 1946 the “illegal” immigrant ship Josiah Wedgewood was intercepted by the HMS Venus while attempting to
run the British blockade of Palestine. The ship, carrying 1,300 European Jewish refugees, was taken to Haifa and her
passengers transferred to a detention camp. They carried signs reading “We survived Hitler. Death is no stranger to us.
Nothing can keep us from our Jewish Homeland. Our blood will be on your head if you fire on an unarmed ship.”
Displaced Persons in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp carry banners and flags to a demonstration protesting the
forced return to Europe of the Exodus, a ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees to Palestine. The Exodus became a symbol of the “illegal” Jewish immigration to Palestine after the Holocaust. 1947. (Gedenkstatte Bergen-Belsen, courtesy
of USHMM Photo Archives)
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photo archive
QUESTIONS
1. How does the text below the photo and the photograph illustrate one of the major problems facing
Jewish Holocaust survivors?
2. What contemporary examples are there of other people seeking asylum?
3. Is the United States or any other nation obligated to assist these people?
288
Aftermath
DOCUMENT 4A
War Crimes Trials
More than 35 million people—
most of them civilians—were killed in
Europe during World War II. What
treatment should be meted out to the
Nazi leaders who had unleashed
genocidal violence? The Allies
weighed these questions at
Nuremberg, Germany, the site of a
series of war-crimes trials.
On November 20, 1945, U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Robert H.
Jackson began the prosecution at
Nuremberg. “The most savage and
numerous crimes planned and committed by the Nazis,” he emphasized,
“were those against the Jews.” “Hitler,
Heinrich Himmler, and other major
Nazi figures did not hear his words.
They had escaped trial by committing suicide. Twenty-two other Nazis
were in the dock, however, when the
International Military Tribunal
(IMT), consisting of judges from the
Allied powers—-Great Britain,
France, the USSR, and the United
States—began its work.
The Nazi defendants included
Martin Bormann, Nazi party secretary
and chief aide to Hitler, who was tried
in absentia (he had not been found
and was believed to be dead);
Hermann Göring, who had authorized Reinhard Heydrich to prepare
the “Final Solution”; Ernst
Kaltenbrunner, head of the Security
Police; Hans Frank, the Nazi governor
of Occupied Poland; and Julius
Streicher, a leading anti-Semitic propagandist.
Jackson’s opening statement
notwithstanding, the indictments
against these men did not refer explicitly to crimes against Jewry. Instead,
each of the Nuremberg defendants
was tried on one or more of the following charges: (1) crimes against
peace, (2) war crimes, (3) crimes
against humanity, and (4) conspiracy
to commit any of these crimes.
The IMT acquitted three of the
defendants. Twelve others—including
Bormann, Göring, Kaltenbrunner,
Frank, and Streicher—were sentenced
to death by hanging. Seven more,
including Albert Speer and others
who had used concentration-camp
prisoners as slave laborers, received
prison terms.
Under U.S. jurisdiction, 12 more
trials were held at Nuremberg from
October 1946 to April 1949.
Indictments against Nazi war
criminals led to trials in a variety of
other courts, too. Nevertheless, only a
fraction of the thousands directly
involved in war crimes and the
Holocaust were brought to justice.
That shortcoming, however, does
not diminish the essential contributions that those postwar trials made.
They documented much that had
happened, and their proceedings
became a public record that continues to bear witness to the Holocaust.
In addition, the trials established
important principles: leaders can be
held legally responsible for crimes
committed in carrying out their government’s policies, and individuals
cannot defend themselves by simply
claiming that they had only obeyed
orders.
In the aftermath of the trials, the
United Nations adopted a Convention
for the Prevention of Crimes of
Genocide as well as a Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
David J. Hogan and David Aretha, eds. The Holocaust Chronicle (Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, 2000), 634.
QUESTIONS
1. What is a war crime?
2. Who should be held responsible for war crimes?
3. How did the Nuremberg trials address this issue of responsibility?
4. Why do you think the Allies decided to hold the trials in Nuremberg?
5. Do you think justice was served?
Aftermath
289
DOCUMENT 4B
The Nazi Hunter
The 21 top-ranking Nazis who were captured
immediately after the war were judged before the
International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in
1945–1946. But other architects of the Final
Solution, such as Heinrich Müller, head of the
Gestapo; Hitler’s advisor Martin Bormann; and
Alois Brunner, SS deportation expert, remained
at large.
Not content with government agencies’ often
slow efforts to track down these war criminals,
several individuals took matters into their own
hands. Many devoted their entire lives to finding
high-ranking Nazi officials and bringing them
to justice.
One of the most famous Nazi hunters was
Simon Wiesenthal, born in 1908, in a small
town in Galicia, now western Ukraine.
Wiesenthal had lost 89 family members in the
Holocaust. He himself had spent four-and-ahalf years in concentration camps. In 1945, he
emerged from the Mauthausen labor camp a
skeleton, weighing less than 100 pounds.
Wiesenthal then worked with the U.S. Army,
helping to track down war criminals in Austria.
As part of his work, he accumulated lists of
suspected criminals and recorded eyewitness
accounts of Nazi atrocities.
In 1947, Wiesenthal set up a small
“Documentation Center” in order to help Jews
locate missing relatives. In the process, he began
building an extensive file of suspected war criminals’ names, known or presumed addresses, and
witnesses to their crimes. By accumulating
extensive evidence against them and writing
countless letters to governments urging them to
prosecute war criminals, he built a reputation as
one of the most relentless and effective Nazi
hunters. Over the years, he helped to locate and
bring to trial more than 1,100 suspects. “I do this
because I have to do it,” Wiesenthal once said. “I
am not motivated by a sense of revenge.”
One of Wiesenthal’s greatest successes was
bringing about the capture of Franz Stangl, the
former commandant of the Sobibor and
Treblinka death camps in Poland, where more
than 1 million people were murdered. On
December 22, 1970, Stangl was sentenced in
Germany to life in prison “for having supervised
the murder of at least 900,000 men, women, and
children.” He died in 1971.
Eleanor Ayer and Stephen Chicione, Holocaust: From the Ashes: 1945 and After (Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press, 1998), 46–47.
QUESTIONS
1. Why did Wiesenthal feel it was necessary to pursue and prosecute high-ranking Nazis?
2. Should high-ranking Nazis continue to be pursued and prosecuted? Why? Why not?
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DOCUMENT 4C
The Most-Wanted Nazi
One of the highest-ranking Nazis still at large
after the war was Adolf Eichmann, an SS lieutenant colonel who had arranged the transportation of millions of Jews to death and concentration camps. In order to demonstrate Eichmann’s
knowledge of, and participation in, Hitler’s
“Final Solution,” Wiesenthal told of a report
from a Nazi meeting in Budapest, Hungary, in
1944. Some of Eichmann’s cohorts asked how
many Jews had been exterminated thus far.
When Eichmann responded “5 million,” they
asked if he were nervous about what might happen to him when Germany lost the war.
Reported Wiesenthal:
Eichmann gave a very astute answer that
shows he knew how the world worked: “A
hundred dead people is a catastrophe,” he
said. “6 million dead is a statistic.”
Eichmann—who had been caught by the
Americans and then let go—fled from Europe
with a passport issued by the Vatican under the
name Ricardo Klement. For years, Wiesenthal
and other Nazi hunters sought in vain for traces
of him. Finally, in May 1960, they caught
Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and delivered him to Israel. On May 23, Israeli Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion publicly announced
that Adolf Eichmann had been brought to
Jerusalem and would stand trial.
At the trial, the chief prosecutor read the
counts against Eichmann, numbering 15. At the
end of each, the defendant was asked how he
pleaded. Each time, Eichmann responded, “Not
guilty.” Wrote Wiesenthal later:
I thought that Eichmann should have been
asked six million times, and he should have
been made to answer six million times.
The Eichmann trial, which was televised to
much of the world, lasted from April 11 through
December 15, 1961. One hundred witnesses for
the prosecution—90 of whom were survivors of
the Holocaust—took the stand. Eichmann himself
also testified. In the end, he was found guilty on
all counts and was sentenced to death by hanging.
Eleanor Ayer and Stephen Chicione, Holocaust: From the Ashes: 1945 and After (Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press, 1998), 47-48.
QUESTIONS
1. How did the attitude expressed by Eichmann, “6 million dead is a statistic,” enable the Nazis to
carry out the “Final Solution”?
2. Why do you think the Israelis decided to televise the Eichmann trial in 1961?
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DOCUMENT 5
“The Hangman” by Maurice Ogden
1.
Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame,
And he paced our bricks with a different air
And built his frame on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime,
The Hangman judged with the yellow twist,
Of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead;
Till one cried: “Hangman, who is he,
For whom you raise the gallows-tree?”
And we cried: “Hangman, have you not done,
Yesterday, with the alien one?”
Then we felt silent, and stood amazed:
“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised…”
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
“Did you think I’d gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That’s a thing I do
To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”
Then one cried “Murderer!”
One cried “Shame!”
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man’s place.
“Do you hold,” said he,
With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?”
And he laid his hand on the one’s arm,
And we shrank back in quick alarm,
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of the fear of his Hangman’s cloak.
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
“He who served me the best,” said he,
“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman’s scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root.
And he stepped down, and laid his hands
On a man who came from another land—
And we breathed again, for another’s grief
At the Hangman’s hand was our relief.
Now as wide, or little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse door.
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman’s cloak.
2.
The next day’s sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town
And, stark and black in the morning air,
The gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and businesslike.
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3.
The third he took—we had all heard tell—
Was a usurer and infidel,
And “What,” said the Hangman, “have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?”
And we cried out: “Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?”
The Hangman smiled: “It’s a clever scheme
To try the strength of the gallows-beam.”
The fourth man’s dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
And “What concern,” he gave us back,
“Have you for the doomed—the doomed and
Black?”
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DOCUMENT 5 (continued)
“The Hangman” by Maurice Ogden
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again:
“Hangman, is this the man?”
“It’s a trick,” he said, that we Hangmen know
For easing the trap springs slow.”
And he whistled his tune as he tried the snap
And it sprang down with a ready snap
And then a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.
And so we ceased, and asked no more
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score;
And sun by sun and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
“You tricked me, Hangman.” I shouted then,
“That your scaffold was built for other men,
And I’m no henchmen of yours,” I cried.
“You lied to me, Hangman, foully lied!”
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side:
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye:
“Lied to you? Tricked you?” he said. “Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true:
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
4.
Then through the town the Hangman came
And called in the empty streets my name—
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall
And thought: “There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree.”
And I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman’s tree and the Hangman’s rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town,
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
“For who has served more faithfully
Than you with your coward’s hope?” said he.
“And where are the others that might have stood
Side by side in the common good?”
“Dead,” I whispered: and amiably
“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me:
“First the alien, then the Jew…
I did no more than you let me do.”
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky,
None had stood so alone as I—
And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there
Cried “Stay!” for me in the empty square.
Maurice Ogden, “The Hangman”. Reprinted from a study guide on the Holocaust (1999). Reprinted by permission. Georgia Commission on the
Holocaust.
QUESTIONS
1. What choices were open to the townspeople when the Hangman arrived?
2. Was there a way to stop the Hangman? If so, how? If not, why not?
3. How does the poem relate to Germany in the 1930s? To society today?
4. How is the point Niemöller makes his poem in Lesson 4 similar to the one Ogden makes in
“The Hangman”?
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293
DOCUMENT 6
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The declaration below, adopted by the members of the United Nation’s General Assembly in
December 1948, outlined its view on the human rights guaranteed to all people.
Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Article 3
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4
No one person shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade
shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.
Article 9
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 13 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the
borders of each state.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to
return to his country.
Article 14 Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from
persecution.
Article 15 Everyone has the right to a nationality.
Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Article 20 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Article 21 Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly
or through freely chosen representatives.
http://www.un.org/overview/rights.html
QUESTIONS
1. How is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a response to the events of the Holocaust?
2. Is the United States or any other nation obligated to enforce it? Why or why not?
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DOCUMENT 7
“Ethnic Cleansing Center”
New York State Education Department, Global Studies Regents Examination, June 1994, Part II, p.10.
QUESTIONS
1. What do each of the headstones in the cartoon represent?
2. What is the main idea of the cartoon?
3. Choose three of the groups depicted in the cartoon. For each, what were the causes and
events that led to the murder of many members of the group? Use specific historical information
in your answer.
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295
DOCUMENT 8
“Riddle” by William Heyen
From Belsen a crate of gold teeth,
from Dauchau a mountain of shoes,
from Auschwitz a skin lampshade,
Who killed the Jews?
Not I, cries the typist,
not I, cries the engineer,
not I, cries Adolf Eichmann,
not I, cries Albert Speer.
My friend Fritz Nova lost his father—
a petty official had to choose.
My friend Lou Abrahms lost his brother.
Who killed the Jews?
David Nova swallowed gas,
Hyman Abrahms was beaten and starved.
Some men signed their papers,
and some stood guard,
and some herded them in,
and some dropped the pellets,
and some spread the ashes,
and some hosed the walls,
and some planted the wheat,
and some poured the steel,
and some cleared the rails,
and some raised the cattle.
Some smelled the smoke,
some just heard the news.
Were they Germans? Were they Nazis?
Were they human? Who killed the Jews?
The stars will remember the gold,
the sun will remember the shoes,
the moon will remember the skin,
But who killed the Jews?
William Heyen, Erika: Poems of the Holocaust (St. Louis: Time Being Books, 1991), 42.
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DOCUMENT 8 (continued)
“Riddle” by William Heyen
QUESTIONS
Read the poem aloud or silently two or three times.
1. What is the main impression, feeling, or point you get from this poem?
2. Choose at least three lines which support your answer to Question 1 and quote those lines.
3. Tell why those lines are particularly descriptive and explain how they support your answer to
Question 1.
4. If the “Universe of Obligation” is an expression used to describe one’s sense of responsibility to
others, what does “Riddle” make you think about?
a. Who is to take responsibility for the Holocaust?
b. How could individuals have made different choices and how might the outcome have differed?
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297
DOCUMENT 9
The Universe of Obligation
SELF
QUESTION
Remember that you completed this diagram at the beginning of the unit. Fill it out again to see how
you now perceive yourself and your obligation toward others.
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CONTEMPORARY CONNECTION AND HOMEWORK
Something in Common: Horror
Survivors Describe the Evils of Genocide
Read the article and then answer the questions at the end.
By Corey Kilgannon
David Gewirtzman and
Jacquueline Murekatete stood
before a restless group of students at Great Neck North
High School, waiting to tell
their stories. They seemed to
be an unlikely pair speaking on
what seemed an unlikely
topic—genocide—for a group
of teenagers munching on
sandwiches and rustling snack
wrappers.
By the time they had finished, however, the only sound
that could be heard in the
room was the faint hum of a
radiator.
Mr. Gewirtzman, a 75-year
old retired pharmacist who
lives in Great Neck, N.Y., On
Long Island, survived the
Holocaust by spending almost
two years burrowed with other
members of his family under a
pigsty on a Polish farm.
Now, he visits local schools,
hoping that by telling of his
experiences, he can educate
students and help prevent a
killing like the Holocaust from
happening again.
When he spoke at a high
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school in Queens two years
ago, Ms. Murekatete, then a
student, was in the audience.
She said his story had made her
burst into tears. She wrote him
a note relating her own horrible story, which took place in
Rwanda, in central Africa in
1994. She narrowly escaped
being hacked to death by a rival
tribe. Her family—both parents
and all six siblings—did not.
“I finally found someone
who understood what I went
through because he went
through the same thing,” said
Ms. Murekatete, now 19 and a
freshman at the State
University at Stony Brook.
Mr. Gewirtzman met the
teenager, heard her story and
suggested she begin speaking
to groups with him.
It would not bring her
family back, he said, but it
might save other families from
potential genocide. It would
also help to heal her own pain.
“We are as different as can
be,” he told the students.
“She’s black, I’m white;
she’s young, I’m old; she’s
African and Christian and I’m
a Jew from Poland. Yet we’re
like brother and sister, because
we’re bound by the common
trauma of our experience and a
common history of pain and
suffering and persecution.”
Now they appear regularly
together, hoping that they can
bring experience and relevance
to a harsh subject. But neither
expected the impression they
would have on each other, and
how deep their friendship
would grow with the only
apparent bond being death.
Elaine Weiss, a history
teacher at the high school who
directs its social science
research center, said she asked
them to speak because “the
kids can identify with an 18year old girl better than they
can with a 75-year old man.”
She said, “Our kids read
theories about racism and
genocide in books. But when
they hear similar real-life stories from a white European
man and a black African
teenager 55 years apart in age,
who lived through events 50
years apart in history, it’s not a
theory anymore. It’s alive.”
Mr. Gewirtzman grew up
in a small village in Poland and
in November 1942, the family
persuaded a local farmer to
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CONTEMPORARY CONNECTION AND HOMEWORK
Something in Common: Horror
Survivors Describe the Evils of Genocide
hide them and some relatives—eight people in all—for
20 months in a small trench
below a pigsty strewn with
mud and pig waste.
Day after day in the hole,
they would argue whether to
surrender to the Nazis, he
recalled.
“At times my father would
yell at me, ‘Why did you lead
us here? We should have gone
to Treblinka and gotten it over
with,’ “Mr. Gewirtzman said.
“I’d tell him, ‘You must want to
die, but don’t you want your
children to live?’ Then he
would snap out of it.”
“We thought there wasn’t a
Jew in Europe still alive, but for
some reason, I never once
doubted we would survive,” he
said. “Maybe I was too young
and naïve, but I never lost
hope.”
They did not escape until
July 31, 1944, when the Nazis
retreated.
Mr. Gewirtzman and his
family lived in Europe for several years, then came to the
United States in 1948. He
served in the United States
Army in Germany.
He and his wife have two
300
grown sons and he also volunteers at the Nassau Holocaust
Memorial Center, in Glen
Cove, Long Island.
As Mr. Gewirtzman spoke,
the students became spellbound. Some still held back
tears as Ms. Murekatete began
telling how she grew up as the
second oldest of seven children
on a family farm in Rwanda.
Her family was members of a
Tutsi tribe. In April 1994, when
she was 9, the news came over
the radio that the Hutu president had been killed. Groups
of Hutu men and boys wielding guns, machetes and clubs
began descending on the villages, killing Tutsis.
The day they reached her
village, Ms. Murekatete was
visiting her grandmother
Magdalene Mukasharangabo in
a nearby village. Her grandmother saved her by taking her
to an orphanage.
After two months, she
learned from surviving cousins
that her family—her mother,
father, two sisters and four
brothers—had been tortured
and hacked to pieces with
machetes. Most of her other
relatives were also killed,
including her grandmother.
She was brought to New
York in October 1995, by an
uncle who legally adopted her
and applied for political asylum for her. She spoke only
Kinyarwanda, but was placed
in a fifth-grade class and soon
learned English and began
excelling in school.
She said she still sees her
family in her dreams. Other
times, though, she is chased by
men with machetes.
“I’ve never gone to a counselor or a therapist,” she said.
“At first, I guess I hoped it
might just go away.”
She said, “Some of my
friends are afraid to ask me
about it and I’m not a person
who talks about my problems.”
Ms. Murekatete is currently
writing a book about her recollections of the genocide in
Rwanda.
She also said that last
September, she met the human
rights advocate Elie Wiesel at
an International Day of Peace
ceremony at the United
Nations. After hearing her
story, he hugged her and said
he would help her publish it.
With many cousins, aunts
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CONTEMPORARY CONNECTION AND HOMEWORK
Something in Common: Horror
Survivors Describe the Evils of Genocide
and uncles killed and only a few
relatives left, Ms. Murekatete has
grown close to Mr. Gewirtzman
and his wife, Lillian, a Polish
Jew, who had been sent with her
family to Siberia for six years
while Russia occupied Poland.
Ms. Murekatete visits their
home in Great Neck and has
been to their summer home in
the Hamptons. The
Gewirtzmans went to her high
school graduation, and she had
tears in her eyes.
“I didn’t know what to do
with my experience and he
showed me,” she said when
asked about that day.
Mr. Gewirtzman said, “In a
way we’ve become sort of parents to her.”
“We both went through a
traumatic experience,” he said,
“but instead of remaining bitter and angry and seeking
revenge, we both resolved to
spend the anger in a positive
manner, to prevent this from
ever happening again.”
Ms. Murekatete shows listeners that racial hatred has outlived the Holocaust, and that
genocide was not just something
that happened to an old Jewish
man from Poland, he said.
“When I go to an inner–city
school, the kids might think
they have nothing in common
with some Jews 60 years ago, or
me with slavery,” he said.
“But when they see both of
us, they see the problem is the
same,” he said. “It transcends
race and ethnicity. People are
still being taught hatred and it
is hatred that we are fighting.”
Ms. Murekatete said,
“Sometimes students ask if
they can help, and I say, ‘The
best thing you can do for me is
to educate yourselves so this
New York Time, January 14, 2004, B1-2.
QUESTIONS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Give 3 important details about David Gewirtzman’s experience.
Give 3 important details about Jacqueline Murekatete’s experience.
Describe why these two are an unlikely pair and explain what has drawn them together.
Describe the conversation David had with his father while they were in hiding.
Describe Jacqueline’s situation in Rwanda in 1994.
Having read about two very different survivors, compare and contrast their survival experiences,
and the contributions, if any, of those who helped them.
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301
REFERENCES
Ayer, Eleanor, and Stephen Chicione. Holocaust: From the Ashes:
May 1945 and After. Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press, 1998. .
Dawidowicz, Lucy S., The War Against the Jews. New York: Henry
Holt & Co., Inc. 1962.
Dwork, Deborah, “My War Began in 1945.” in Images of the
Holocaust: A Literature Anthology, ed. Jean E. Brown, Elaine C.
Stephens and Jane E. Rubin. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC, 1997
Gilbert, Martin. Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: William
Morrow, 1983. Originally published 1960.
Heyen, William. “Riddle.” In Erika: Poems of the Holocaust. St.
Louis: Time Being Books, 1991.
Hogan, David J., and David Aretha, eds. The Holocaust Chronicle:
A History in Words and Pictures. Lincolnwood, IL: Publications
International, 2000.
Ogden, Maurice, “The Hangman.” Reprinted from a study guide on
the Holocaust (1999). Georgia commission on the holocaust.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam. 1982.
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